Medium Format
Identity Design
2025
The Issue of Rights.
Medium format is a fictional brand that I created in the identity design class at Keene State College. We created these fictional brands around a character from a movie called Amelie, I had a character called Nico who was an eclectic individual. Nico in the movie went around and collected all sorts of pictures and magazine and that sort of trinkets. This gave me the idea to make an artistic photography magazine. I had to opportunity to continue explore this idea with an independent study and this is the result of that.
Logo & Product Ideation
Above is some of the process around developing this brand, I settled on the name medium format. Medium format is a style of camera sensor that is highly revered, I thought the sound of it made a name with some allure.
Then it came time to ideate on the product. I knew I wanted to make a magazine, but I had never had the opportunity to make one before. I wasn’t exactly sure what the content of this magazine would be, but I was given the time to explore some potential content options in my independent study. At the same time I was exploring this magazine, trump took the oval office and for some started implementing some controversial polices.
So for this magazine I started to reference United States documents from the past and the future as a basis for content.
Finding Form & Ideas.
I had become fascinated with the supreme court of the united states at the time of making this magazine. A podcast listen to called more perfect had introduced this idea in the courts called stare decisis, where the court relies on precedent it set in the past to carry out new cases. It was exactly this that created more LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, rights that trump rolled back. So for this magazine I started to reference United States documents from the past and the future as a basis for content.
French Fold Magazine
I started to research on magazines and how they were built. A conventional magazine is sent off to a press to build and they’re done in runs of hundreds or thousands which was inconceivable for this project. I settled on this French fold magazine that is rather large, printed out on the large format printer at Keene State College. I had also decided to print it on a “cheaper” paper… somewhere in-between newsprint and printer paper.
The "Final" Magazine
The final magazine ended up being a 16 page magazine that I started to develop a style for the brand with. I say finished with quotation marks because nothing is ever really finished, especially this project because with every iteration it gets a little bit better and meaningful. In its current state it represents the state of the political sphere in early 2025, and just in that respect alone it will always be changing.